The Silence of Beating Hearts
by rainypromise
Summary: Set after The City of Ashes. Jace and Clary met in Pandemonium for the second time. Conversations are not just held with words.


**Title:** The Silence of Beating Hearts

**Pairing: **Clary/Jace

**Timeline:** Before City of Glass

**Summary:** Clary and Jace stumbled upon each other in Pandemonium

**Disc:** Really, if Mortal Instruments are mine, I'll be rich and I wouldn't be here. If Jace was mine, I'll be a whole lot happier and would have no time to be here...I'll be hanging out with him...

Anyway, my first Mortal Instruments Fanfiction. Totally crazy about it though.

ONWARDS!

ggggggggggggg

**The Silence of Beating Hearts**

Pandemonium.

It seemed like ages ago since she was here.

Clary couldn't really figure out why she came _here_ of all places on her last night before she went to Idris. Sentimentality perhaps, or some kind of desperate attempt to ground herself, to clear her thoughts.

She snorted into her drink, not like a nightclub was the best place to search for clarity but still...

She liked the burst and bleed of lights, the way they seem to blend people together, softening edges but defining angles. It was as if the dancing—a loose interpretation of the word really—crowds of people was one moving entity; restless, vibrant. Alive.

She needed that.

If she was painting the scene she would've used oils and acrylics; bold, harsh, unbalanced.

They reminded her that not everything was about monsters or enchanted tools, runes or werewolves, vampires or a secret organization that kills demons.

That not everything was about stopping your evil overlord father from taking over the world.

That not everything was about the fact that is was nephilim, shadow hunter and along the title, the responsibilities and risk and weight that came with it.

They reminded her that not everything was about Jace.

_Ah_, whispered a small voice inside her head, _now we've come to the crux of the matter._

_No. Not everything was about Jace_, she pressed her lips together, _but it sure felt that way_. She remembered the way he asked her, no, _begged_ her even, to not go to the City of Glass. He'll do anything, he said.

She wasn't stupid, she knew Jace was thinking only of her safety but...

She shook her head, her cloud of red hair cascading over her shoulders and back, slick and dark in the trembling light of the night club that smelled like perfume, sweat and smoke.

Not everything was about Jace, she reminded herself, she had better things to do than worry about Jace. God knew, he's more than capable of taking care of himself. The question was, whether he would.

She _really_ wished he would.

She spread her gaze across the shadow tinted crowd and tried to feel...a connection, she supposed.

This used to be her life. And she needed to know that she could still fit in. Not that she fit in before, but at least she had felt like she belong...most of the time.

Her eyes passed a flash of black and gold that was so familiar, they flickered back to it in an absent manner.

Her heart did a slow, sickening turn, plummeting to her stomach before bounding up back again to lodge in her throat.

"It so figured," she whispered softly to herself when she met Jace Wayland's golden eyes from across the room. She shouldn't have been able to see the color of his eyes as clearly as she had, maybe it was just her mind supplying her with those shimmering, clear gold. The way she'd always wanted to paint his eyes. The way she'd always wanted to paint _him_.

All black and white and gold.

The way she'd always wanted to but never dared.

It mollified her that at least he looked as surprise as she did, no, not _looked_. He didn't show any emotion at all but for the slight tension in his shoulders.

She shouldn't have been able to notice that too, but she could.

She shouldn't have fallen in love with him but she had.

Before she realized it, without breaking eye contact, she was already half way across the dance floor, at least until one particularly spirited dancer jostled her from her path. He did it strongly enough that she stumbled and when she lifted her head again, Jace was gone.

It was as if someone ripped apart her chest, took out her still beating heart and set it on fire.

She stood amidst the grinding bodies and struggled to find her breath until hard fingers gripped the curve of her waist. Usually, when she encountered such a situation as this in the past, she would either shrug them off then walk away. If those wandering fingers persisted, she would've grabbed his thumb and twisted.

But she didn't do any of those things, _couldn't_, because she was too busy trying not to close her eyes so she could feel them better.

She knew those fingers.

She knew that touch.

She knew the body that loomed behind her, emanating heat and danger. She could smell him now that he was close; metal, blood and leather.

"Jace." His name was a whisper on her lips, inaudible under the pound of music that pulsed and beat, hard and fast like her heart. As if he heard her, as if he heard_ it_, she felt him take another step forward and pressed his body closer to her back.

She tried to turn, to look at his face but the hand on her waist slid further to her stomach and held her in place, molding their bodies together.

She felt everything inside her tense and thrum when his voice rumbled into her ear, his breath wisping her hair. "Dance with me."

She shivered and shifted her feet and turned her head but again he locked the arm he has around her and pressed even closer. "Jace-."_ What are you doing here? Are you alone? Are you with Isabelle or Alec? Or with someone else?_

The sick twist in her stomach at the thought had no place inside her.

Her questions trembled and died on her tongue when he started to move, moving her with him.

His fingers splayed on her stomach and each time they swayed, his fingers slipped beneath her short sleeveless top and grazed her skin, spreading heat that climbed down her toes and shimmered into her heart.

Her eyelashes fluttered close when he slid his cheek against hers, his gilded hair tickling her temples when he buried his face into her hair, inhaling deep.

His hot breath singed her neck while his fingers smoothed over her stomach.

He kept her close as they swayed from side to side in slow, aching movements. The trance-like music and the frantic movements of the dancers around them only seemed to emphasize how slow they were moving.

It was distracting and agonizing; the way their bodies grazed, the way the material of their clothes clung and rubbed. She could feel the heavy jacket that he wore and the firm, unrelenting build of his body, the hard press of weapons that she knew were always there.

His heart beat drummed onto her back, echoing hers.

With his arms around her, with him moving slow against her, the club took on a slow drug-like quality.

Everything was dimmer, softer as the sensation of his touch and the feel of his body against her grew sharper, stronger.

She wanted to see his face, _needed_ to see his face, his expression. She needed to know that it wasn't just her alone that felt like this. She turned her head and incidentally grazed her lips—softly, lightly—against his cheekbone.

The effect was instantaneous, as if she had struck him, he inhaled sharply; his body stiffened and his fingers flexed tight on her stomach.

When rays of light hit them in passing, glinting in his hair, she saw his eyes flared.

She stifled a gasp at the look on her face because he looked so fierce, so deadly and even more beautiful, she was half in mind to apologize and to walk away. Instead, his mouth covered hers in a kiss so hard and hungry it snapped her head back and made her take a step away from him.

But the hand on her body gripped her shirt and hauled her right back, pressing their bodies close, their chests sliding together until their bodies locked together like two perfect pieces of a puzzle.

Even before his lips soften on hers; masterful rather than punishing, she was already kissing him back, helpless, unable to refuse the demands of his touch, and the demands of her own heated body. Her lips parted under his, their breathes mingling while their tongues curled and tangled.

Heat-the kind that sear and burn you to ashes within seconds-burst out from where their skin touched and flamed even high, brighter, hotter from each prolonged caress.

She reached out and wrapped her arms around his back, fisting her fingers on the stiff material of his jacket, feeling the shift and movement of muscle and bone as he tried to bring them together, as if he wanted to crush their two bodies and made them one.

And then he moved again, the same slow, circling movement, the same friction of bodies and heat while their mouths fused, their hands locked on each other.

Someone moaned, it might be her, when he nipped—none too gently—her bottom lip, his fingers dug into the flesh of her hip. Her own fingers were biting into his shoulders when he murmured her name into her mouth.

And they swayed.

And they kissed.

...saying nothing but each other's name under bright lights and dancing shadows.

Tomorrow they would go to Idris as brother and sister, as shadow hunters, but tonight...tonight they were Clary and Jace.

The cab ride home was silent, as was the walk to Luke's door. When she opened the door and turned to him, a look was all they exchanged—a look filled with words that were not allowed to pass their lips in the context of what the words would really mean if they ever really did—before she closed the door.


End file.
